Daydream believer
Simon Barnes
SO Michael Knighton has left Carlisle United and, with Carlisle, football — at least for now. Football is the lesser game without him. It has lost one of the great loony chairmen of all time, perhaps the greatest player of fantasy football there has ever been — save that he used real players, real football grounds and real money.
He was the tubby little chap with a moustache who almost succeeded in perpetrating the business steal of the century. At a time when the game was staggering under Thatcher, hooliganism and the disasters of Heysel and Hillsborough, Knighton believed in football. You couldn't give the game away at that time: it was too tacky, too grubby, far too not-quite-our-class-dear. The PM loathed it with a passion. But Knighton came within an ace of buying Manchester United for £20 million. Manchester United is now the richest club in the world, and sums of money like £20 million are loose change.
The board was happy to go along with a move that would have cost them all several million. Knighton became the new chairman-elect, and celebrated his ascension by running on to the pitch before a home game in full kit and giving a display of ball-juggling in front of the Stretford End.
'And if you look at those pictures today, Simon, the people are all smiling,' Knighton told me years later. He is one of those men who talk as if they'll get a quid every time they use your name.
In the end, the deal fell through. Some believed that Knighton's mysterious backers lost their nerve after the ball-juggling incident: others claimed that his mysterious backers were not as solid as he had insisted. Either way, the backers now find themselves in the position of the man from Decca records who turned down the Beatles.
But Knighton was all right. People like him arc the wobbly clowns of the nursery: every time you knock them over they swivel back upright with irritating grins on their faces. He next bought into Carlisle United: 'People laugh at me, Simon, but I tell you that within ten years this will be one of the great clubs of Europe.'
I don't believe that people laughed. I'm more inclined to believe that they backed nervously out of the room muttering soothing banalities. And, oddly enough, Carlisle did not become Real Madrid, AC Milan and Juventus rolled into one. They rose, certainly, from their place at the foot of the Football League, and then, just as certainly, sank. Somewhere along the line, Knighton sacked his manager, Mervyn Day, and took on the job himself. What else is a fantasy footballer supposed to do?
He guided Carlisle unerringly back to the foot of the Football League, from which position they should never have emerged, and finally left the club last week amid the usual sort of shame and spitting. But I feel an odd sense of loss.
Though he never seemed exactly likeable, there was something endearing about him. He always behaved as if reality were a cop-out for people who couldn't handle football. I used to find myself sneaking a look at the Carlisle results, hoping that the club would continue to defy reality.
It was not to be, of course. Knighton has been knocked down again. He will certainly bounce back — already he is talking about non-League football. Why not? Football is duller without the presence of the man who — almost — stole Manchester United.
Previous page
